Whoever wants to know what Israel is likely to look like a few years from now should cast a glance at the positions of the teachers of religious law in Iran. We are witness now to large-scale offensive by those known as the “rabbis of religious Zionism”, who, as their position strengthens within governing circles, are revealing their grim and frightening faces, from with the new Chief Military Rabbi Eyal Karim, who approves of the rape of Gentile women in war, to the head of the pre-military academy in the settlement of Eli, Rabbi Yigal Levenstein, who sees the LGBT community as sick and deviant.

The ascendency of the religious Right over the institutions of government in Israel is one of the diseases of the protracted Occupation, including the settlement enterprise. A secular and liberal Israel is an ever-receding goal. Whoever wants to live a life free of obscurantist religious dictates would do well to look for a place to live outside Israel. Those who want to live here regardless should adjust their wardrobes to suit the rabbinical demands of modesty.

This moral corruption affects all segments of the Establishment. From the High Court of Justice, which barred the Pride Parade in Beersheba, to the correspondents in the mass media who cover the religious scene in Israel and try to paper over the seriousness of the words of these rabbis and their friends.

Terror in Nice and Israel

Whenever a massive terror attack happens, we are witness to two simultaneous phenomena in Israel. One: government ministers present Israel as part of the global struggle against terror, preaching morality to Europe, whose leaders might now “understand” the Israeli struggle. At the same time brigades of commentators in the mass media, who emphasize in their words that Europe has not yet internalized the new reality, and propose to European leaders that they adopt Israel’s methods, and dispense with “democratic beautification”. The truth is that Israel is not part of the struggle against terror, but part of the terror. A struggle against terror must also include the struggle against Israel, which has implemented cruel terror for 50 years now.

The truck attack in Nice in which innocent civilians were kileld over does not resemble Palestinian vehicle attacks, which are part of the struggle against the Occupation, and usually directed against the forces of the Occupation. Palestinian vehicle attacks can be summarized as counter-terror against the terror of the Occupation. Democratic Nice should not be confused with the Occupied Territories. Israeli state terror mainly harms innocents, and Palestinian guerrilla counter-terror also harms innocents. There can be no avoiding the iron rule according to which the Israeli Occupation is feeding some of the terror from which Europe is suffering today.

The best contribution Israel could make to defeating terror in Europe would be to dry the Israeli terror swamp.

On 25 June 2016, you convicted Saher Ghazawi of “improper conduct in a public place, conduct likely to disturb the peace”, for having yelled “Allahu akbar” towards a group of Jews who were visiting the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in September 2011.

I don’t know if Allah is akbar or not, but I do know that the ruling reflects a judge who is a complete judicial deviant. Is that the spiritual nourishment you absorbed at the Midrashiat Noam school in Pardes Hanna? You are a product of the Occupation, and your ruling is a product of that product and as such is a disturbance of the democratic peace. It is an expression of the judicial and racist tyranny in which the Israeli justice system is immersed as it fades into darkness.